More Wildlife Photos

My job kept me busy into the evening most nights this week which left me no time to write.  On top of that, the weather kept us form doing any work on the boat, so I didn't get into any trouble.  On Sunday we plan to finish working on our port side stanchions.  That requires holes to be drilled into the deck, so we need to wait until there is no chance of rain.

I did get some exercise in though; working out in the fitness room and walking to try to get back into shape now that my shoulder works again.  While walking and hanging out around the marina I've seen some more creatures and taken photos.  I really need to start carrying my real camera instead of just my phone.

Its hard taking a photo of a dolphin from 200 ft away using a cell phone.  This is the first Atlantic Bottlenose we've seen since we left the Gulf coast and moved to the Atlantic coast.

Manatee in our marina.  I think I saw this same one last fall.  I recognize the propeller scars.  A lot of boaters in FL hate the manatees.  There are slow zones to protect the manatees and boaters get annoyed because they have to go slow for a short time.  It would be like hating kids because you have to go slow through a school zone.

 

A family of otters in our marina.  I knew FL had them, but this is the first time I've seen them around here.

 

Went on a walk and saw three snakes in about 0.1 miles.  After that every stick, vine and shadow looked like a snake.  This one is a Eastern Corn Snake.

Southern Black Racer #1

Southern Black Racer #2

Gopher Tortoise.  It sits just outside it's burrow, but every time I get out my camera it backs up into the hole.  These are endangered, but we know where three of them live.

We went to the Ft Pierce Manatee Center expecting to learn about manatees, but not see any.  We saw seven including three moms with babies.  Learned that even though manatees get up to 1000 pounds they have very little fat and can't survive in water below 68 degrees for long.

Wendy saw a Eastern Coachwhip snake, but didn't have a camera.  It was pretty easy to find it on the internet with the description.  Not many snakes look like this.

 

 

Sandhill Crane.  I'm oddly fascinated with these birds.  This one is about 3.5 ft tall, but they get as tall as 4 ft.  They will walk right out into traffic.  I saw a pair stop traffic on a 6 lane highway and they didn't rush to cross.

Same one up close.

 

Same one really, really close up.

 

Osprey.  There are a lot of these around, but I had my real camera with me this time.

 

 

Wendy gets a Job

About the time we bought Kailani Wendy retired from her career as a speech therapist.  Since then she has been adjusting to life without a job.  She is learning how to cook, learning Spanish, learning about our boat, doing a bunch of reading and playing a lot of games on her tablet.  She had planned on getting a volunteer job with Meals on Wheels or the Humane Society, but she didn’t really have time in her day after playing games for hours.  Well that changed this week as she started volunteering at the local Humane Society. 

Wendy’s choice of The Humane Society made me a little nervous; I had been hoping she would pick Meals on Wheels.  It seems much more likely that she’ll bring home a dog from the shelter than bring home an old person from Meals on Wheels.  I love dogs and would really like to have one on our boat, but Kailani is not dog friendly.  To get in and out of the boat the dog would have to be carried and to get on and off the boat when we are not at a dock the dog would have to be lifted.  Plus, we already feel like we are running out of room, so where would we store dog food, where we would place a water bowl and where would the dog sleep?  Once cruising, going from one country to the next usually requires a visit to a vet to certify the dog is healthy and has no rabies.  Some countries will not allow you to take dogs off the boat at all or if they do they have to go to quarantine for weeks or months.  So, for now, we have decided to remain dogless.

Anyway, Wendy’s new job is a dog walker.  She goes in whenever she wants and walks as many dogs as she feels like.  The first couple of days she had to stop because the kennels were closing.  She has a hard time leaving when dogs are standing at their gates wagging their tails and watching her with their big sad eyes.  When she returns to the boat each day she looks as if she has been in a fight.  She returns covered in blood and bruises and dirt with scratches on her hands and arms and paw prints all over her shorts and shirt.

We fostered Great Danes for over two years, so Wendy is used to big dogs, but Danes are pretty laid back.  They don’t usually jump up or pull too much, though dogs like Hercules, at 190 pounds, would just wander off and Wendy would be forced to follow.  At the shelter most of the dogs are Pit Bull mix.  These are much smaller than Danes, but they have plenty of muscle and tons of energy.  Unlike the Danes we fostered, who had nearly constant human contact, most of these dogs are starved for attention.  So when Wendy shows up to take a dog for a walk it typically goes crazy.  This might be the poor dog’s one chance to go outside for the whole day and they get excited about the opportunity.  When Wendy shows them the leash most of the dogs will leap up on her trying to reach her face to give her a kiss.  Once the leash is on they’ll jump on the gate trying to get out and begin the walk.  She’ll take them out for a walk then let them loose in one of the fenced in areas where the dogs get to run, play, dig and generally just be dogs.

The hardest part is putting them back in their cages.  Wendy will have to block the dogs from trying to escape or the dogs will block Wendy from getting to the gate and leaving them behind.  One dog even bites her hands to keep her from opening the gate.  Without getting kicked out, Wendy would stay there all day and walk every dog.  Fortunately, we have an agreement that she can’t bring home a dog that she can’t carry off the boat.  For right now that means carrying a dog up a ladder with 6 rungs.  That pretty much excludes any Pit Bulls, so at this point the boat is safe from a doggie invasion.

While she is not supposed to bring her phone with her, she did sneak it in one day and took some photos of the dogs she walked.  Below are a few of the dogs she has met.

 

Coco

Tiza - You can sit in that chair, but only if you want a big dog in your lap.

 

Porter

Paisley

Phoebe

Harley - Wendy loves this one.

Bubbles

Little Surprises

Old boats aren’t like cars.  Over the 8 years that our model boat was in production, Pearson built less than 240 boats.  Toyota Camry, just in the US, sells 1100 cars a day.  Cars are built by a manufacturer and they build or have built for them nearly every part on the car.  Most new boats from large scale builders are now similar to cars in that respect; they are production built and are exactly the same as their sister boats.  The wires and hoses are all in exactly the same positions, the engines are the same, the interiors are the same; they are basically exact copies of each other.

Old boats were much more custom than most new boats.  While there are many similarities between sister boats, there can be, and often are, a lot of differences.  The Pearson 424 came in three different setups.  Ours has one mast and two sails, while others have one mast with three sails or two masts with three sails.  Respectively, those are called sloop rigged, cutter rigged and ketch rigged.  The interiors are all slightly different, as are the exteriors, but the hulls are all the same, so they are considered to be the same model.  From one boat to the next the manufacturer may have used different engines, different masts, different rigging, different hardware, etc. and because of that there isn’t a manual like there is with a car.  In addition, previous owners have made changes as better equipment options have become available or parts have worn out.  I would guess that by now you would be unable to find two Pearson 424’s that are exactly alike.

We do have an engine manual, but we don’t have anything that shows where the hoses run, where the wires run, how to turn things on or off and even what equipment is onboard.  That leads us to occasionally discovering new things about our home.

When the rigger finally finished re-installing the mast we noticed that our new deck lights didn’t work.  We had a label on our switch panel that said, “Deck Lights”, but when we flipped it nothing happened.  We had the electrician come back out to check the wiring and he found that we had power up to the base of the mast.  When he was going through the circuit, though, he asked if there was another switch for the deck lights.  I said, “Not that I am aware of.”  Then he asked how we activated the horn on the boat and I said, “We have a horn?”  Apparently, we have a horn on our mast that we have no idea how to use.  I’m still trying to figure that out.  The wiring did get straighten out and we now have working LED deck lights controlled by a single switch.

New LED deck lights light up our deck and the surrounding boats while drawing very little power.

We knew we had a hot water tank when we bought the boat.  On many boats the only function the tank serves is to hold water that has been heated up by the engine.  I assumed ours was like that until one day, after living on the boat for about four months, I noticed a switch on the panel labeled “Water Heater”.  I flipped the switch then later that day checked the tap water and sure enough, we had hot water.  We haven’t been taking showers on the boat; we use the marina bathrooms for that, but it would have been nice to have hot water over the winter.  Oh, well, we have it now.
 

AC switch panel with Water Heater clearly labeled.

We look forward to the time when we know all the systems on the boat and the location of every switch, valve, wire and hose.  I suspect it will be a while before we reach that point, so until then life aboard will be a series of little surprises.  Hopefully, more good surprises than bad.

 

Alpenglow Lights

The previous owners of Kailani had installed four Alpenglow lights.  These are handmade, marine, interior lights.  They are beautiful and energy efficient.  It's weird that they are made in Montana; it would be hard to be further from an ocean.  Originally, they were made with custom fluorescent bulbs.  More recently, the company has switched to LED lights. While the LEDs are no more efficient than the fluorescent bulbs, they last virtually forever and are shock resistant.  The fluorescent bulbs are custom made for Alpenglow and expensive.  We didn’t want to have a carry a bunch of extra bulbs around, so we were looking for an alternative.  We found that Alpenglow offers a rebuild service; for less than half the price of a new LED light you can have your old ones converted.  It seemed like a good choice.

Alpenglow light in main saloon.

These are our main lights, so to send them all in at one time would be a hardship.  Instead, we have been sending them in one at a time.  When one comes back we send out another one.  The first one went great.  We sent one out and ten days later we had a converted LED light that had been cleaned and refinished.  We sent the second one in; they quickly rebuilt it and sent it back then took a two week winter vacation.  What company takes shuts down for two weeks in Feb?  Anyway, they said we should receive the light around Friday, Feb 14.  Our mail all goes to the marina office; they put the envelopes into boxes for us and they hold the packages until we come in and sign for them.  The packages are placed on a big table with our names written in big magic marker letters on the top of them.  On Monday, Feb 17 I stopped by the office to see if the package had arrived.  I checked the list and didn’t see our name.  No big deal, sometimes the mail is slow.  I checked back the next day and the next, on the following Friday the office manager looked through all the packages to see if it had arrived, but not made it onto the list.  No luck. 
Nothing left to do but wait until Alpenglow came back from their winter vacation.  When they returned I asked them for a tracking number.  They sent a number that didn’t work, but let me know they had checked and it had been delivered.  I asked them to try again and they sent a number that worked and showed that the package had indeed been delivered.  Now I had proof and was looking forward to the next day when I could go to the office and demand they produce the package.
The next day I stomped into the office and said, “We have a problem. The post office says that a package was delivered two weeks ago and you are claiming it hasn’t arrived.”  The office manager asked if it was an envelope or a package.  I said it was a package and held up my hands to show the size.  Beside me there was a table that holds all the packages that are waiting to be picked up.  I looked at the table for a package that was close to the size I was expecting to help reinforce the size I was trying to explain.  Seeing one that looked right, I grabbed it and said, “It should be about this size”. Looking down at the box in my hands I realized that it had my name on the label.  The office had written the senders last name in big, bold letters on the box and on the list, instead of our last name.  The box had been sitting there for over two weeks just waiting to be picked up.  From now on I’ll ask for a tracking number as soon as a package ships.  Also, if I expect something and the office says it isn’t there I’ll just take a look through the packages anyway.   Maybe I’ll save a couple weeks of waiting.

 

We have a leak

Things on boats break, especially boats in salt water.  You really don’t expect things to break when you are just sitting at a dock, though.  I guess we should just always expect it.

Last night Wendy made a delicious dinner of Pad Thai. We went out and bought some ice, something we rarely have on the boat, and then had Pad Thai with margaritas on ice.  It was as a great night, good food, good drinks, very relaxing, right up until it wasn’t.  Wendy finished her meal and headed to the sink to wash her dishes, right about the time my friend Delaney called.  So, I’m talking to Delaney and I hear the water start to run in the background and shortly after the pump came on to force more water into the accumulation tank.  Everything operating just like it should.  Then Wendy noticed her feet were getting wet.  Uh, oh, something was leaking.  She yelled out that we had a leak and Delaney says, “I guess I’ll talk to you later.” I raced into the galley, pulled open the cabinet door under the sink where all the hoses, pump and accumulator are, and felt like I had stuck my head into a lawn sprinkler.  Something had come loose and water was spraying everyone under the sink.  I quickly shut off the water, but that only slowed the spray.  Wendy ran back to the switch panel, flipped off the switch for the pump and the sprinkler slowly died down. 

Under the sink is a dark place at night, we don’t have a fixture that sheds any light directly under there, so I wasn’t sure where the leak was.  All I knew was that there was a leak and everything under the sink was wet.  Wendy held a flashlight for me while I removed everything we store down there.  Paper towels, dish towels, cleaning rags, cleaning supplies, all soaked.  I pulled out the tool box, found my 8mm socket and proceeded to tighten every hose clamp in the cabinet.  There are about 30 of them, but I think I got them all. Wendy went back and flipped the switch for the pump to the “On” position and I watched the sprinkler start up again.  It was a connection that didn’t have a hose clamp.  The water pump has some sort of quick connector and that was the problem.  The hose has a fitting attached to the end of it, that fitting pushes into the pump, then a little slide comes down over the fitting and the whole thing stays in place, unless it doesn’t.  Somehow the slide had slid and the fitting had popped part way out, so the pump wasn’t pumping water into the system it was pumping water into the cabinet.  I put the fitting back into the pump, pushed down on the slide, wrapped a towel around it and Wendy turned the pump on again.  I carefully opened the towel and saw that there was no leak.  Whew.  Problem resolved.  Then we just had to clean up all the water, wipe down everything that got wet, leave everything sitting out and the cabinet door open all night so that it would all dry out.

The offending slide clip.

 

One of the rules of cruising is that you never leave your pump on when sailing.  If you need to use the water, you turn your pump on until the accumulator tank is full then turn it back off.  You can use water for several minutes before the tank needs to be recharged.  The reason for this is that you can’t hear the pump running while you are sailing, so if you have a leak like we had the pump would literally pump all of the water out of the tanks and onto the floor.  There is no danger of sinking from that, it is simply transferring the water from the tanks into the bilge, but it does mean that all of your fresh water will be gone.  At best that would be inconvenient, at worst, life threatening; people don’t do well without water.  While this incident wasn’t fun, it did help to reinforce that rule in our minds.  Even when you have a well-organized and properly maintained water system, leaks can and will happen because things break on a boat.

Toilet Talk

OK, for all you nurses out there this is probably no big deal.  However, as an engineer, someone who barely has to deal with people, dealing with people’s excrement is a bit traumatic.  This is the story of replacing our head (marine toilet) and our holding tank (where things should go when you flush the head).  It happened back in the fall, but I was too traumatized to write the story.

When we bought Kailani the head seemed to work and the holding tank seemed to hold, but when we actually sailed the boat around the south of Florida to our current location we found some problems.  First, a little history - Marine heads got their names from old wooden sailing ships.  The toilet was basically a hole cut in the boat that you could sit on. There were usually two; one of each side of the bowsprit which is all the way at the front of the boat or the head of the boat.  Anything that went in would just fall directly overboard.  It is a little confusing because the bathroom is called the head and the actual toilet is called a head, but we're talking about the toilet for now.  Marine heads do not have a tank like a house toilet does.  When you want to use the head you start by switching a valve to the “wet” position and pumping a handle to push some water into the bowl.  The saying is “nothing goes into the bowl that hasn’t passed through your body.”  Marine heads are notorious for getting clogged and you can’t just call a plumber.  Putting a bunch of paper in the bowl is a sure way to stop it up and the rule is – if you stop it up, you get to unstop it.  So, you do whatever it is you need to do and if you need to use paper, you typically put that in the trash, not the bowl.  Afterwards you pump some more water into the bowl then flip the switch back to the “dry” position and empty the bowl.  Simple, as long as everything works correctly. 

Plaque in our head.

 

The new head.

 

In a harbor the waste goes to the holding tank and offshore the waste just goes straight overboard.  There is a three way switch in the line that allows the waste to go from the head to overboard, from the head to the holding tank or from the holding tank to overboard.  That allows the tank to be pumped overboard when the boat is offshore.  It wouldn’t do to be stuck with a full tank offshore.

When we sailed the boat from the west coast of FL to the east coast we found that a valve on the water inlet had cracked and was leaking.  To get around that problem we used the fresh water shower to fill and flush the head.  That solution worked for a week, but we needed to replace the valve because that fix wasn’t going to work long term.

In addition to the inlet water leaking the head itself was leaking.  We thought it might just be the inlet water, but even after shutting off the inlet water the head was still leaking.  That meant it was waste water leaking out onto the floor.  Yuck.

We had a couple of options at this point.  Option 1 was to rebuild the head.  It was a Groco head, made of bronze, bullet proof and would likely last forever.  On the down side the Grocos are horrible to rebuild and require a vise and special tools.  Option 2 was to buy a new inexpensive head.  It would cost about twice as much as a rebuild kit for the Groco, but it would require very little work to replace.  Also, it would be much easier to rebuild.  Pretty easy choice – we went with a new Raritan head.  It won’t last as long, but they are cheap to buy and easy to rebuild.

Then we had one more problem.  Our holding tank wasn’t holding.  Thirty years ago, when our boat was built, there were no regulations about dumping waste overboard.  Since boats didn’t need to contain their waste they didn’t have holding tanks; everything went directly overboard.  Then in the 90’s most states began requiring boats to contain their waste and use pumpout stations.  So, old boats like ours had to find room to add a holding tank.  The easiest way was to install a soft sided flexible tank.  Those didn’t require any real modification to the boat; just stuff them into the bilge where ever they would fit and you’re finished.  Great solution, but the flexible bags have a limited life.  Ours had passed that limit long ago and everything that went into the tank now leaked out into the bilge.  For those who don’t know, the bilge is the lowest point of the interior of the boat.  Everything drains down into there and is then pumped out by an automatic pump.

Summing it all up, we had a leaky inlet valve, a leaky head and a leaky holding tank.  I started with replacing the leaky inlet valve and the head at the same time.  Since I was going to have to disconnect all the hoses for both jobs I figured I may as well do it once, instead of twice.  We bought a new head, a new valve, new hose clamps and new hoses then went to work.  There was no way to get all the “water” out of the old head, so we double bagged some heavy lawn garbage bags and carefully moved the head into them, tied them closed and got the whole mess off the boat.  The new head fit perfectly and the new hoses and valve went in without a hitch.

Then the fun began.  We ordered a new holding tank, once again getting a bag type because it would fit easily.  Once it arrived I just needed to switch it out with the old tank.  The old tank had leaked waste into the bilge, so I dragged a water hose into the boat and sprayed everything down until the area was clean.  The leaky bag wasn’t empty, but it was as good as it was going to get.  I disconnected all the hoses, opened the boat, cleared a path then lifted the bag out.  It started out well; no drips or spills.  I had to lift the bag up to get it out the companionway and that’s when it happened.  The bag leaked on my hand, down my arm, on the steps and on the floor.  Let’s just say the leak wasn’t urine.  I almost dropped everything right there and ran off the boat screaming and waving my arms around.  Then I realized that if I did that I would still have to get it out of the boat and it wasn’t going to get any easier.  I continued up the steps being careful where I put my feet and making sure to keep all the parts with holes elevated.  I managed to get it off the boat, up the dock and into the trash can without spilling anymore, but I still had it on my hand and arm.  I headed straight to the bathrooms and scrubbed down until my skin was red.  Back at the boat I still had some cleaning to do.  I cleaned so thoroughly three months later there is still a clean spot on the steps.

After cleaning up and recovering mentally I installed the new holding tank bag.  As a water tank it has a five year warranty, as a holding tank the warranty drops to only one year.  That’s not very long and way too soon to think about going through this mess again.  We still haven’t used the new holding tank and we’re not sure if we’ll keep it.  We are thinking about cutting a big hole in the floor and putting in a hard plastic tank that will last for as long as we own Kailani.  I guess that depends on how much time we have after we finish everything else on the list. It would be expensive and messy, but in the long term the benefits may outweigh the trouble.

New holding tank installed and waiting for use.  There are three hoses - one is the inlet hose, one the pump out hose and one the vent hose.  The vent hose is there to allow for expansion; it wouldn't do to have the tank explode.

 

 

I make curtains for Kailani

OK, so I made curtains with my mom’s help.  Or maybe she made curtains with my help.  She did a lot of the work and all the hand stitching.  On top of that she supplied the expertise that helped my work be much more efficient.  I did a lot of reading and studying before moving onto a boat.  I learned a lot, but I didn't think to learn how to sew  proficiently so I had some catching up to do.

If you read the post Marina-3, Will-0, you’ll know that I sacrificed my phone to the marina and with it a lot of photos.  I lost some really good photos of the original ugly curtains.  However, I had one left on my new phone.  These curtains were almost indescribably ugly, but since I found a photo I won't have to describe them.  I’m sure they would have looked ok in a room filled with antiques lived in by a woman who was slightly over 100, but the pattern had no place on a sailboat.  Any sailboat.  Ever.  In the forward cabin the curtains made a little more sense.  They were quilted curtains with little sailboats on them.  Nice, but a little too cutesy for us.  We picked a nice nautical stripe that looked good with the wood and left us lots of options for new saloon upholstery.  Below are the photos of the two types of curtains originally on the boat. 

No words.

 

Forward cabin curtains - the good looking ones.

 

One of the really cool things that my mom showed me was how to make sure the fabric was straight.  The sides are always straight because they are manufactured that way, but the edge going across is cut in the store and is rarely straight or at a right angle to the sides.  Especially with fabric that has strips it is really important to have the strips going straight up and down or across.  So, to make sure you have straight edges you pull a thread.  All the threads run straight across the fabric, so you find a thread on one side of the fabric and start pulling.  The fabric begins to gather and you slide it along the thread.  If you keep pulling and sliding, eventually you will create a line all the way across the fabric that will be at a 90 degree angle to the sides.  You just cut along the line and you have a piece of material that has square edges.

Another tip was to make sure there were no loose threads inside the curtains.  We made lined curtains.  They have two layers and are sort of like a sealed envelope.  If there is anything inside, there is no easy way to get it out.  You may not notice a thread when the curtains are just laying on a table, but once hanging over a window the light will shine through and illuminate any stray threads.  So, you have to hold them up to a light and remove any strays before you sew them shut.

I did most of the easy sewing and my mom did the detailed sewing. Sewing the material together was mostly my job, but when it came to stitching across the top where people could actually see the thread - that was all mom.

Well, a couple of long weekends and the curtains were all finished.  They are now hung in the boat and greatly improve the view from inside.  Next improvement for the inside will be new upholstery, but there is lots to do outside before we get to that.

The new curtains installed.  No threads showing through.

Much better than before.